iran

Hykleren Hillary Clinton

Den amerikanske udenrigsminister Hillary Clinton har udsendt en erklæring til støtte for de regeringsfjendtlige og demokrativenlige demonstranter i Iran, skriver the Guardian her til morgen:

Hillary Clinton has sent a message of support for Iranian protesters and accused Iran’s government of “hypocrisy” for praising the protests in Egypt while cracking down on dissent in its own country.

Clinton said Iran’s protesters “deserve to have the same rights that they saw being played out in Egypt and are part of their own birthright,” and that the US government “very clearly and directly support the aspirations of the people who are in the streets” of Tehran.

Æh, den Hillary Clinton, der nu beskylder den iranske regering for hykleri, er hun mon i familie med den Hillary Clinton, der i næsten to uger støttede Mubarak mod demokrati-demonstranterne i Egypten og til det sidste nægtede at opfordre diktatoren til at gå af?

Og hvordan kan det være, at hun så ikke også har udsendt en erklæring til støtte for demonstranterne i Yemen (hvor der nu på femte dag er store protester mod den enevældige præsident) og Bahrain (hvor to fredelige demonstranter allerede er døde)?

Man skal vistnok ikke beskylde andre for hykleri, hvis man selv bor i et hus med visse … lad os bare sige inkonsistenser.

Update: Arabist har også bemærket Clintons lidt svingende omsorg for menneskerettigheder i Mellemøsten.

Ytringsfrihed: Befri Hoder (selv om han er lidt klam)

Kort og humoristisk video, der opfordrer til at støtte den iransk-canadiske blogger Hossein Derakshan, selv om han måske ikke er helt fin i kanten. Og et forsvar for princippet om også at forsvare dem, man ikke selv er enig med.

Iranere boykotter Nokia på grund af samarbejde om regimets overvågning

Nokias salg falder i Irak på grund af mobilproducentens medvirken i leverancer af aflytningsudstyr, som i dag bruges til at finde og fængsle dissidenter:

Wholesale vendors in the capital report that demand for Nokia handsets has fallen by as much as half in the wake of calls to boycott Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) for selling communications monitoring systems to Iran.

There are signs that the boycott is spreading: consumers are shunning SMS messaging in protest at the perceived complicity with the regime by the state telecoms company, TCI. Iran’s state-run broadcaster has been hit by a collapse in advertising as companies fear being blacklisted in a Facebook petition. There is also anecdotal evidence that people are moving money out of state banks and into private banks.

Nokia is the most prominent western company to suffer from its dealings with the Iranian authorities. Its NSN joint venture with Siemens provided Iran with a monitoring system as it expanded a mobile network last year. NSN says the technology is standard issue to dozens of countries, but protesters believe the company could have provided the network without the monitoring function.

Link: Iranian consumers boycott Nokia for ‘collaboration’

Persepolis – 1.0 og 2.0

Marjane Satrips tegneserie og tegnefilm Persepolis giver et dystert billede af revolutionen i Iran og af, hvordan det kunne være for et medlem af den yngre generation at flygte til Europa, miste sig selv, komme tilbage, miste sig selv en gang til og endelig finde en form for ben i et menneskefjendsk, islamisk diktatur.

Den kan varmt anbefales som baggrund for begivenhederne i Iran – begynd f.eks. med traileren herover.

Persepolis 2.0 er en tegneserie om oprøret i kølvandet på valget i juni 2009, lavet af to af Satrapis fans:

Hvad kan vi gøre for Iran? Om troskabseder og selvpromovering

I betragtning af, at adskillige politikere nu åbenlyst forsøger at slå plat på den tilspidsede situation i Irak ved krav om “troskabseder” fra herboende muslimer og tilsvarende krav om, at regeringen skal “gøre” noget, er det måske værd at erindre om dette, sakset fra hr. Kommentar:

…consider the following thought experiment. In 1963, as King delivers his famous speech to the March on Washington, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev delivers a public message of his own to the protesters. “We would like to tell these brave voices of freedom,” Khrushchev says, “that they have the full support and solidarity of the USSR. The Soviet Union and the United States Communist Party are ready and willing to perform any measures within our power to help our American brothers and sisters obtain their rights from this oppressive regime. And although Dr. King pretends that he holds no hostility toward the American capitalist system of government itself, and wishes only to secure the ideals of the American founding for all of its citizens, we all know that he and his supporters really yearn for complete regime change in Washington. We in Moscow will do whatever it takes to help you achieve this goal.”

Let us ignore the question of Khrushchev’s intentions here: whether he is motivated by genuine sympathy and desire to aid the civil rights marchers, or a more cynical hope of destabilizing a rival government, or a narcissistic and self-righteous wish to take credit for the marchers’ achievement in order to feel better about himself and appease his domestic critics. (And before anyone gets up in arms about “moral equivalence,” let me note than I am not equating Obama’s America and Khrushchev’s Russia, merely noting that Obama and Khrushchev occupy structurally similar positions as leaders of distrusted rival powers.)

Let us focus only on a simple tactical question: would Khrushchev’s statement aid the civil rights movement? Would it be welcomed by King and his associates? Why or why not?

Hvis Krustjov dengang havde haft et ønske om at støtte King og borgerretsforkæmperne, ville han nok have holdt sin mund. Og vi kan så tage bestik af situationen og tænke tilsvarende.

I virkeligheden er det måske mere ligetil for enkeltpersoner og organisationer (uden statsstøtte) at gøre en forskel, hvis man vil: Skriv til den iranske ambassade og protester over undertrykkelsen. Og bed regeringen åbne grænsen for de iranske flygtninge, der desværre let kunne komme temmelig mange af i den kommende tid.

Læs også: Iran: This Is Not a Revolution (via Lenin’s Tomb).

Iranske dissidenter i fængsel – takket være Nokia og Siemens

Tænk på dette, næste gang du køber en Nokia-telefon eller en Fujitsu Siemens-computer. Begge firmaer tjener med største fornøjelse millioner på at levere overvågningsudstyr til et regime, der bruger det til at sætte folk, der siger deres mening eller organiserer protester, i fængsel:

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), a joint venture between the Finnish cell-phone giant Nokia and German powerhouse Siemens, delivered what is known as a monitoring center to Irantelecom, Iran’s state-owned telephone company.

A spokesman for NSN said the servers were sold for “lawful intercept functionality,” a technical term used by the cell-phone industry to refer to law enforcement’s ability to tap phones, read e-mails and surveil electronic data on communications networks.

In Iran, a country that frequently jails dissidents and where regime opponents rely heavily on Web-based communication with the outside world, a monitoring center that can archive these intercepts could provide a valuable tool to intensify repression.(…)

Ben Roome, a spokesman for NSN, said, “We provide these systems to be used under the applicable laws in their countries and make sure we are abiding by U.N. and [European Union] export regulations and code of conduct. We provided the monitoring center to Irantelecom. We are not going to comment on the use of it. It is there to record lawful intercepts.”

But William Daly, a former CIA signal-intelligence officer for the agency’s Office of Science and Technology who retired in 2000, said the monitoring center in Iran will be used to “monitor dissidents and those ayatollahs who oppose the Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei].” (…)

Mohsen Sazegara, a founder of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards who became a democracy advocate and was arrested in 2003 for his opposition to the Islamic republic, said there were rumors in Iranian opposition circles that the Germans had sold the state powerful new technology that would make their monitoring efforts more effective.

“My first reaction is, ‘Wow! Why do they do this?’ Don’t they know that this will be used against the people of Iran?” said Mr. Sazegara, who now lives in the United States.

“They facilitate a regime which easily violates human rights in Iran and the privacy of the people of Iran. They have facilitated the regime with a high technology that allows them to monitor every student activist, every women’s rights activist, every labor activist and every ordinary person.”

Update, 23/6 kl. 21.30: Politiken har nu også historien (25 timer efter modspil.dk 🙂 )

Link: Fed contractor, cell phone maker sold spy system to Iran

To ting:

1. Det er stadig slet ikke sikkert, at Ahmadinejad virkelig tabte det valg. Det ved vi ikke, med mindre der kommer en pålidelig omtælling.

2. Folk er meget, meget vrede i Iran, og der er mange af dem.

Det spiller bare ikke længere så stor en rolle, om der blev svindlet med valget eller ej. Det er tydeligvis slet ikke længere det, men hele regimet, det handler om. Hvordan vil det ende?

Jeg vil ikke kloge mig på det. Må præstestyret give sig, eller ender vi med at se en jernnæve, der knuser al videre modstand? Begge muligheder står åbne lige nu. Men Iran er et stort land med en meget gammel kultur – det kunne være rart at se det vende politisk og kulturelt tilbage til verden som et frit land, som det ikke har været i hvert fald siden 1953; det år, shahen kom til magten ved et kup.